Finished: Mansfield Park (Austen) Sigh, I've now finished all the Jane Austen novels! What ever shall I do? :-) I suppose I could go and read the one she was working on when she died, which has been completed by several other authors. I just love Jane Austen. Mansfield Park is the story of poor and socially lower class Fanny Price, who goes to live with her wealthy, and upper social class aunt, uncle and cousins, the Bertrams, when she's just 10. Her aunt and uncle treat her more as if they are doing her the favor of her life, and don't really treat her as equal to her beautiful, educated cousins. Her female cousins treat her pretty much like a second class citizen. Her oldest male cousin is too self-centered to really treat her any way in particular. Her second oldest male cousin, 16 year old Edmund, however, treats her like the smart, wonderful little human being that she is. He brings her books to read and teaches her what he can. Naturally, Fanny falls for Edmund, but never lets him know. By the time she is 18 and all her cousins are in their 20's, the two girls have had various coming out balls and the two boys are coming into the expectations of their father, i.e., the oldest is expected to inherit most of the lands, title, etc., and Edmund will go into the clergy, albeit with a nice income and property himself. Fanny has remained a dedicated, unselfish, innocent family member who appreciates any kindness shown her way. When friends of friends of the family, the twenty-somethings Miss Mary Crawford and her brother Mr. Henry Crawford come to town, all manner of social and love circumstances occur. Henry Crawford is a ladies man whose main goal is usually to make women fall in love with him and then soon after dump her to move on. Mary Crawford is all about social status, wealth, and being entertained. Deep down, they both have good hearts...very, very deep down, but they only let them shine through a small bit of the time. Naturally, the two female cousins, Maria and Julia Bertram, both fall hard for Henry Crawford. Despite Maria being engaged to another man, she flirts shamelessly with Henry Crawford, which is, of course, in those days, a huge social taboo. Julia and Maria basically fight for Henry's attentions, and he leads them both on, then dumps them both to leave town for awhile. They are both heartbroken, but Maria goes on and marries, and Julia goes to town with her sister to be in the social scene there. Meanwhile, Edmund falls head over heals in love with Mary Crawford. Mary, herself counting on falling for the oldest, more titled Bertram son, Tom, instead actually falls for Edmund too. However, she is always putting down the fact that he'll be "just a clergyman" and tries to convince him at every turn to do something more "worthwhile" and socially acceptable with his life. This always hurts his feelings, mostly because he is also a very selfless person and sees his future occupation as a good and noble one where he can actually do good for people. He looks past Mary's comments, though, and convinces himself she's got a good and true heart. Edmund falling for Mary Crawford completely crushes Fanny, but less out of selfishness than out of caring for Edmund not getting his own heart crushed. One of the few things that can make Fanny happy during all this is her uncle inviting her oldest brother, William, who has joined the navy, to come and visit. Fanny is beside herself with happiness since she hasn't seen her brother in years. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite passages of writing from Jane Austen in this book is about the relationship between a brother and sister:

Fanny had never known so much felicity in her life as in this unchecked, equal, fearless intercourse with the brother and friend, who was opening all his heart to her, telling her all his hopes and fears, plans and solicitudes....and with whom all the evil and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure retraced with fondest recollection. An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas, it is so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing. But with William and Fanny Price it was still a sentiment in all its prime and freshness, wounded by no opposition of interest, cooled by no separate attachment, and feeling the influence of time and absence only in its increase. 

I love that, and completely relate in how my relationship with my own brother was. So, anyway, after William leaves, Fanny is thrown back into worrying about Edmund, who she loves dearly but can't tell him, being hurt by Mary. In the meantime, Henry Crawford has come back and has decided to set his sites on the shy, innocent Fanny!! At first, he hopes to just make her fall in love with him and then dump her. However, he soon actually falls in love with her and declares that love, much to Fanny's horror. Everyone tries to convince Fanny to accept Henry's proposal of marriage, especially her aunt and uncle who feel that she may never make another "connection" so glorious. Fanny, however, had been witness to what she considered the charming Henry's "bad character" when he flirted shamelessly with Maria the betrothed woman. Henry insists that he has changed and even though rebuffed by Fanny at every turn, he swears to keep trying...and that he does. So much so that I even began to think that Fanny might warm up to him and we might get a happy ending out of them. That was not to be though. In a shocking ending, Henry shows his true colors and hooks back up with the very married Maria, convincing her to run away with him for a weekend!! Scandal ensues! Fanny is actually relieved not to have Henry pursuing her anymore, but her aunt, uncle and cousins are all devastated. Edmund is particularly so when Mary Crawford's reaction to her brother doing something so socially unacceptable is to worry more about covering it up than to have a deeper, more shocked reaction of the wrong he has done. Edmund finally sees how this speaks to the shallowness of Mary's character, and though heartbroken, he calls it off with her. As the story ends, Maria has divorced her wealthy husband, but Henry has refused to marry her, so she is left alone wafting in the wind with no family support. Mary Crawford lives with her sister for many years to come, without meeting a wealthy man to marry who can live up to the other ideals presented by Edmund. And....taaaa daaaa....Edmund realizes he has loved Fanny all along, and the cousins marry! (I guess it was ok for cousins to marry back then.) This makes the whole family happy, so in essence, we have basically a happy ending for most of the characters...the characters that we care about anyway. And, with another sigh, I finally leave off Jane Austen after reading all her books. I'm sure I'll revisit her again in Pride and Prejudice and perhaps Emma or Northanger Abbey, a few of my favorites. :-)